Loved You Then, Love You Still

I get incredibly sappy this time of year. My husband, Zach, and I are celebrating fifteen years of marriage this spring. I have a wedding box where I store treasures from our engagement, wedding, and honeymoon. Every year I like to open the box and look through the contents. There are notes of advice I received at the bridal showers, wedding invitations, the wedding program, cards, and maps of the places we traveled.

Each year I read the story of how God brought us together and the verse that has become our life’s anthem.

“Since ancient times no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who acts on behalf of those who wait for him.” Isaiah 64:4

We knew at the time that God had brought us together, but we had no idea what a beautiful adventure we were in for or the difficulties we would face together. God continues to teach us what it means to wait for Him.

Fifteen years sounds like a lot of time, but I am amazed at all the things I continue to learn about Zach. New life situations bring out new characteristics. Not only do I learn new things about Zach, but marriage brings out qualities in me that I never knew existed. As well as some beautiful things, I have learned that at times I can be quick to anger, speak harshly, and be downright selfish.

Unlike the typical marriage pattern, our first years together were easy and free of conflict. It wasn’t until we had some challenging life circumstances, and we went into what we called “survival mode” that our marriage was tested. We found that even after the crisis was averted, we remained in “survival mode” out of habit.

I get annoyed when people refer to marriage as “work.” Yes, you need to be intentional, committed, and selfless. I feel that this is true of any good relationship. “Work” makes me think of drudgery, and that is not how I want to view my marriage. Marriage has exposed areas of sin in my life that I needed to deal with if I wanted to grow closer to my husband and closer to God. I cannot imagine a more beautiful or loving way to be refined.

Zach and I already had friends go through divorce by the time we were married. Though we were head over heels in love, we also wanted to be wise. We sought out advice and took our pre-marriage counseling seriously. Some of the things we learned were how to fight fairly, divide up household chores, and ways to strengthen our marriage. For the rest of our lives we committed to once a year read a book, go on a retreat, or be a part of a small group that focused on marriage. And the best part, we decided to celebrate!

We have made it a point to celebrate our marriage over and above how we celebrate anything else in our lives. Birthdays come each year regardless of any effort. Marriage, on the other hand, is not a guarantee. We are aware of the statistics of failing marriages and don’t want to be naïve to challenges we may face. When we have added another year to our history together, we want to celebrate!

As our first anniversary was approaching, we decided to give each other traditional wedding anniversary gifts. Since Zach and I also share the same birthday later in the year, we decided that I would plan our birthday and anniversary on the odd years and Zach would plan for the even years.

The traditional first year gift is paper. We were just warming up our creative juices and didn’t think too far out of the box. I gave Zach a new Bible, and he gave me papers for card making. It was my year to plan our date so I reserved the lodge we stayed in on our wedding night. We ate dinner at the local diner just like we did after we got married.

By year four, planning our anniversary gifts had become an exciting challenge. A year in advance we would find out what the theme was so we would have time to think. The gift for year four is fruit.

Fruit.

Who wants fruit as a gift? How would we possibly exchange gifts this year? It just so happens that year four is one of our favorite memories. I knew Zach really wanted an iPod, but I also knew we couldn’t afford it. We had been saving up reward points on our credit card, and I discovered that one of the things I could use our points on was an iPod.

Get it?

Apple iPod…

Fruit!

I was over the moon! I thought for sure my gift would win “most creative” until I opened my present from Zach. He got me a lemon quartz necklace! Who knew fruit could be so much fun?

Celebrating our anniversaries has been a fun and creative outlet for our relationship. The themes that have seemed the most difficult have been the most fun. Year fourteen’s gift used to be “ivory” but has since been changed to “animals.” Again it was my year to plan. Usually it is good advice not to give an animal as a gift, but I knew Zach had always wanted a large fish tank. With the little research I did, I discovered that fish tanks are a lot of work and take a lot of time. In September of that year, I asked Zach if he would like to do a joint gift for our anniversary, and we would work on it together. He agreed. I told him my idea of assembling a large fish tank. It took us a good six months to get everything set up and educate ourselves on the nuances of aquascaping, but by our spring anniversary we were able to have live plants and fish flourishing. For our date, I took Zach on his first ever horseback ride.

This year to celebrate year 15 we are planning a trip to the Oregon Coast where hopefully glass blowing will substitute for crystal. Although making arrangements for our kids and zillions of pets is difficult, celebrating our life together matters. This is just one simple way that I can let my man know that if I was asked to say my vows again today, my answer would still be “I do!”

Loved you then, love you still

Always have, always will